


unbeing dead

by sxldato



Category: Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: Dissociation, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Gaslighting, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Multiple Personalities, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Stucky if you squint, Trust, Trust Issues, but bucky gets a bath which is something that needs to happen, this is??? a little disturbing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-23
Updated: 2015-01-23
Packaged: 2018-03-08 17:10:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3217028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sxldato/pseuds/sxldato
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky gets cleaned up and comes back to himself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	unbeing dead

**Author's Note:**

> i have nothing to say for myself tbh  
> i started this last night and i put off my homework till tomorrow morning so i could work on this instead. i can't write tasteful literature but i like to convince myself that i can by writing whatever the hell this sort of fic is  
> title is from a quote by e.e. cummings: "unbeing dead isn't being alive"  
> 

Clumps of hair float in the bath like rotten frog lilies. Dried, browned blood reddens again as it drifts through the water. It’s warm, but he’s still soaking in his sins, and it makes him shiver.

He can’t re-run the bath. There isn’t enough hot water, for some reason he knows there’s never enough, and he needs to save some for that scrawny punk down the hall. The kid always looks so cold—

_Cold_ —

The air is sharp and he can see his breath—

Feels like knives running over his skin—

Everyone is wrong, snow isn’t soft, it’s unforgiving and cruel, doesn’t give a damn where it goes or who it touches, makes the worst grave—

There’s more blood in the water. He thinks it’s his. There are lots of scratches and gashes on his skin, leaking out, going pink as it spreads thin.

He’s used to the metallic smell, has been for as long as he can remember—how long can he remember? Days? Weeks? Weeks, not months—so he slips beneath the surface, submerging himself completely.

It’s warm, but he feels trapped. He could blink and it could all freeze, turn to ice, and he’ll have missed another lifetime.

He resurfaces.

The war paint is running down his face in streaks. It feels like tar. He wipes it away as best he can and then lets his hands drop back to his knees. The paint swirls through the water, mixes with the blood and dirt.

The scrawny kid—isn’t so scrawny anymore—comes in. Tells him he can refill the bath if he wants.

He doesn’t know how to want, and he doesn’t know if it’s possible to learn something like that. He learned war strategy; he learned how to snap someone’s spine twelve different ways; he learned to stop asking for Steve, and Rebecca, and Natasha. Wanting can’t be taught. Wanting is a human trait. He can’t want, he _doesn’t_ want.

No, that’s wrong. He wants two things: to be clean and _not_ to be cold. Never again.

A third.

To remember.

The man, whose name he remembered when he didn’t know his own, pulls a plug and lets the water drain out. The blood and ink leave splotches and smudges on the bottom of the tub, but the man wipes it away with a small cloth. The bath fills up again slowly, and the man speaks softly. He knows his lips are moving and he can hear himself saying things, but he doesn’t know _what_ he’s saying.

This happens a lot with the man who he knew before anyone else. Like a part of him has turned on all by itself. Autopilot. Somebody—not him, and not the Soldier, someone from before, someone who was just beyond his memory’s reach—takes the controls and pushes all three of them forward. It doesn’t feel wrong, not like when HYDRA took over; this person is allowed to take charge.

HYDRA might not be in his brain, but _these_ instincts were rooted in his DNA. All it takes is a smile from the man he knew, the man he knows, and the switch flicks on.

Steve.

He practices the single syllable often, but it never sounds right. Not when it’s him saying it instead of the nameless man in his head he needs to remember.

The Soldier does not speak at all.

The water is warm. Clean. He wants to be like this water; calm and useful, easily disposable when it is dirty and no longer needed. He would like to disappear down the drain, join the rest of the water, become indistinct in the waves of the ocean—

Or the Potomac.

He lies back down again, and Steve’s hands are on his head, combing through the tangles and grime in his hair. He makes no effort to cover himself, or to make Steve let go. The Soldier’s lurking around somewhere in the back of his head, unthreatening for the time being. Right now, it’s him and that other one, the one who he can’t even give a name, let alone a face. Right now, it’s safe.

He closes his eyes, and Steve’s touch grounds him, keeps him from getting lost in his self-made darkness. He repeats the date to himself in his head, over and over, for as long as his eyes are closed. When he opens them, he asks Steve the date, and it’s the same.

When he sleeps, which is not often, he writes the date on his hand to make sure only a day has passed when he wakes up again. He won’t let any more years be taken from him, and he won’t let himself be tricked. Enough time has passed that he has numbers in small chicken-scratch spiraling up his arm, almost to his shoulder. Today, before Steve came in, he was able to scrub away most of the numbers. He would start again on his palm tonight.

The water smells faintly sweet, and there’s foam drifting past his fingers. Soap, maybe. He doesn’t know, and he doesn’t care. Nothing hurts, and he’s not hurting anybody. As far as his life goes, this moment is bliss. He closes his eyes again.

Eventually, Steve has to wake him up. Tells him what day it is, what year. The water’s gone tepid, and the pads of his fingers are pruning. For a moment, he doesn’t know why he’s in the bath, what had made him dirty enough to warrant this.

Then he remembers. The screeching of car tires, gunshots, the gleam of his own knife. It hadn’t been a big deal, but when the adrenaline wore away, he was left shaking and scared and needing to turn his knife on himself.

It wasn’t the Soldier, not completely—if it had been the Soldier, there would have been a body count. This was a twisted form of him, something HYDRA had unintentionally spawned from thousands of days worth of torture. Order only comes from pain, and when his mind gets too cluttered, and the world is too loud and too bright, he can release some steam from the openings in his skin.

He tries not to think about it anymore. Instead, he lets Steve wrap a bath towel around his shoulders and press a soft kiss to his forehead.

He dries himself off in the bedroom and pulls on a pair of sweatpants and a hoodie, both of which actually belong to Steve. His whole body is screaming for him to lie down, so he crawls under the blankets on the bed and nestles himself between the pillows. The blankets are cold, but quickly warm up from his body heat.

Steve lies down beside him, which is not scary, not at all; it feels right and it feels like home. Steve plays with his hair, gently braiding it and unbraiding it, twirling it around his fingers. He’s talking to him again, but it doesn’t sound like things that need to be responded to; so he just listens, ignoring the dull, persistent sting of his wounds. The soft blankets, the warmth of Steve’s body pressed against his own, Steve’s gentle touch and quiet voice—it all makes everything a little more bearable.

The commotion in his head subsides; the Soldier fades back into complete darkness along with the nameless, faceless man. And with the numbers scribbled down on his hand, he himself can drift away.

**Author's Note:**

> prompts are always welcome


End file.
